


Epic Speeches, And Other Things Dean Winchester Doesn't Normally Do

by jujubiest



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel deserves an epic speech too!, DeanCas - Freeform, Destiel - Freeform, Destiel Wedding, M/M, Post-Canon, The Roadhouse, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29403591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: It's one week till the wedding, and Dean can't seem to figure out what to say for his wedding vows.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

The week before the wedding is a fucking nightmare.

Everyone they’ve ever known gets an invitation, it seems like. The bunker kitchen gets taken over for the purposes of making up and storing enough food to feed a damn army of hunters and friendly monsters and the odd angel and demon and only God knows who else (Amara actually does not know, she’s refused to participate beyond the reception though she was flattered by the invite).

To top it all off they somehow decided it was a good idea to have it at the newly-reopened Roadhouse, which...the Roadhouse is great, really. But it’s also _small,_ and there are upwards of fifty people converging on it for the purposes of this wedding.

At least there’s an open field nearby. At least the ceremony itself will be outdoors under a tent, weather permitting (if the weather doesn’t permit, that will just be _the_ last straw for Dean’s sanity, but Amara says not to worry about it).

And to top it all off, Dean hasn’t managed to write a single line of his wedding vows.

It’s Friday, everyone has finally recovered from the bachelor party to end all bachelor parties, and everything is more or less ready. The flurry of activity in the bunker has calmed down. But Dean is still staring at a mostly blank sheet of paper.

He’s seriously considering just grabbing Cas and making a run for it, at this point. The only thing stopping him is the knowledge that Cas deserves better than a drive-through chapel and a honeymoon spent sleeping in motels or Dean’s car.

Dean’s spent so much time keeping everything he feels bottled up inside, and he realizes now he inadvertently cornered Cas into doing the same. The last thing he wants is to keep doing that, keep hiding in closets and forcing Cas to follow him out of love. He wants to stand up in front of the whole goddamn world and yell about how much he loves Castiel, née Angel Of The Lord, soon-to-be Winchester.

They talked a lot about that. The last names thing. Whether Cas would take Dean’s, or maybe they would just pick a new one together. A part of Dean found that idea appealing. His name came from his Dad, and it’s not like he has a lot of warm fuzzy memories of the guy. Being a Winchester has never made his life _easier,_ that’s for damn sure.

But it’s also his brother’s name. And he likes to think he’s made his own mark on it, too. So in the end they decided on Dean and Castiel Winchester, and then Dean had to hold Cas very tightly for several minutes because just saying it out loud made him feel like this was all too real and, being real, could be lost in the blink of an eye.

He’s working on that. He’s working on a lot of things.

But right now he’s supposed to be working on these goddamn vows, and he _still_ doesn’t have anything further than “the first time we met.”

He sighs.

* * *

The next day, Sam drags Dean out of the crow’s nest and into the kitchen, plonks a mug of coffee in front of him, and makes him drink the whole thing before he talks.

“Dude, you look like hell warmed over,” he says when the caffeine has done its work.

“Gee thanks for the pep talk, Sammy,” Dean grumbles, but there’s no heat behind it. He sighs. “I just...I can’t figure out how to say it.”

“Still with the vows?” Sam asks, sitting down across from him.

Dean nods. He rubs at his eyes, avoiding Sam’s concerned I’m-patiently-listening face.

“When he...when he summoned the Empty, it wasn’t like he just said ‘I love you’ and bam, that was it.” He keeps his eyes on the coffee mug, his hands wrapped around it like it can ground him. They don’t talk about that day, not beyond Dean finally admitting to Sam what happened when they were trying to get Cas back. It’s somehow one of Dean’s worst and best memories all at once, so painful in the moment he thought he wouldn’t survive it, but in retrospect it feels like the moment all of _this_ started. Him and Cas. The wedding tomorrow. These vows he can’t figure out how to write.

“He said all this stuff about me. About how I was more than what people like Chuck and...and _Dad_ tried to mold me to be. About how I changed him, showed him how to care about people.” He shakes his head, half smiling even as he feels a lump forming in his throat.

“What do you do when an angel just says hey, you taught me what love is and I decided to love _you_? How do you tell him yeah, I get it, me too. You saved me and taught me what faith was when I didn’t believe in anything. I didn’t even think love was _possible_ for me until you showed up and kept coming back, over and over, no matter how many times you left, even when I didn’t know how to ask you to stay.”

He takes a deep breath, in and out, still staring into the empty coffee mug like it might somehow contain all the answers. Across from him, Sam huffs a laugh. Dean glares at him.

“What?” He says. “It’s not funny!” Sam waves him off.

“No, I know, it’s not funny. Just. Maybe that’s exactly what you say, Dean. What you just said to me. Say it to him.”

He gets up to leave, stopping to pat Dean on the back as he passes.

“It’ll be fine, man. Cas loves _you._ If he wanted...poetry, or epic speeches, he’d love someone else.”

“Gee, thanks,” Dean says sarcastically. But he finally meets Sam’s eyes.

“Don’t be a jerk, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah...yeah I do. Thanks Sammy.”

“Anytime.”

* * *

Sunday dawns clear and bright, the sunlight melting away the last remnants of the snow clinging to the ground. It’s unseasonably warm around Lebanon, Kansas, seemingly disproving the predictions of the groundhog just a few weeks prior. Perfect weather for an outdoor wedding ceremony.

Dean wakes up slow, finally opening his eyes to the pitch black of his room and the warm weight of Cas in his arms. Neither of them even toyed with the idea of sleeping separately in the week leading up to their wedding. That’s for people who need absence to make the heart grow fonder. Dean’s pretty sure, as he wakes Cas with kisses, that if his heart were any fonder it would go ahead and burst. And they’ve both had enough absence to last them several lifetimes at least.

He sends Cas off for the first shower while he heads to the kitchen to make breakfast. But when he gets there, he sees that the space has already been spoken for, three figures dancing around each other as they make what looks to be a mountain of pancakes and bacon.

Three figures. Sam, Eileen, and...

“Mom?” Dean manages, voice sounding strangled and still rough with sleep. He stares as she turns from where she’s burning the bacon, stares as she hands it off to Eileen with a grateful smile. Stares as she crosses the kitchen to pull him into her arms, where he stands, frozen with shock, unsure how to react.

“Congratulations, Dean,” she says into his shoulder. At the sound of her voice, Dean finally unfreezes, hugs her back probably too tight, closing his eyes to keep any more tears from gathering there.

Amara had brought back almost everyone they’d ever lost. Everyone whose death was a part of Chuck constantly fucking with their lives. Unfortunately, this had not included their mom. Mary’s second death, it turns out, had been a casualty of free will, not a casualty of a sadistic god.

That had been a bad couple of days, when Dean couldn’t quite look at Cas or Jack, when he walked around with his fists and jaw clenched, holding in anger and hurt like he was a bomb and they were shrapnel he was afraid to let fly free. He’d been walking a razor’s edge the entire time between not wanting to talk to Cas and being afraid if he didn’t, Cas might leave again. He’d settled for spending most of his days in the garage, where everyone usually left him alone, and most of his nights holding Cas so tightly it must have hurt, letting his body say what his mouth could not: _stay, I’m angry but I love you, just give me some time, please stay._

He’d gotten past it, mostly. But it had hurt, and he thought it would keep hurting, maybe forever.

When they finally pull away from each other, his mom’s face has tear tracks to match his own.

“How--?” He starts to ask, then realizes at the same time as she answers. “Amara.” She must have changed her mind, or found a loophole, or maybe she just decided to say fuck it and call this a wedding present.

“One of these days, you’ll have to explain to me why every scary-powerful creature I’ve ever met seems to be smitten with you,” she says, clearly teasing him. The words bring a blush to his cheeks anyway. Then, belatedly, he realizes--

“Wait, who told--?” It’s not that he doesn’t _want_ his mom to know about him and Cas. Hell, the idea that she’ll be at the wedding just took a perfect day and made it even better, but...they never talked about it, when she was here before. About him, and the one way he probably didn’t meet her expectations that he was more afraid of revealing than all the rest. But she’s just smiling wider at him, patting his cheek affectionately, more motherly than she’s ever been but also clearly teasing him, still. It’s nice.

“I knew,” she says simply, drawing him over to the table to sit. “When I came back last time, and saw the two of you together. Little things, here and there. You were both so...so _focused_ on each other, and so careful about showing it.”

“And you didn’t have a problem--?” Dean can’t seem to finish any of his sentences today, which doesn’t bode well for later.

“I was surprised. It wasn’t something we really talked about, when I was growing up. I don’t know that I was raised to have a certain opinion on it, one way or another. But I decided it didn’t matter. Love is so rare as it is, what kind of fool turns it away when it shows up just because it shows up in a form you weren’t expecting?” She reaches across the table and squeezes one of his hands, hard.

“I’m so happy for you.”

And really, that’s all Dean needed to hear.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Cas get married the way they've done everything else: according to their own rules.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still not 100% happy with this. It's not perfect. But you know what? I think that's okay. I don't think Dean and Cas's wedding day would be perfect. But it would be right for them.

The Roadhouse is fairly empty when Jack pops Dean over, though he can hear the muffled noise of guests arriving and being directed to the field by a surprisingly sober Ash through the wood-paneled walls. Ellen shoves him toward the back room, saying something about it being bad luck for the grooms to see each other, before Jack can reappear with Cas.

Dean rolls his eyes--he and Cas literally woke up in the same bed this morning--but does as she says. His stomach is full of knots or possibly butterflies, excitement and nerves warring for first place as the actual _wedding_ part of his wedding day creeps closer and closer.

When he hears Cas’s voice outside it’s all he can do not to go running to him. It seems impossible that they only parted ways half an hour ago at most, but he still feels antsy at the absence. Dean wants to _see_ him, he wants to be down that aisle already and saying _I do_ so bad he can taste it.

Then Charlie Prime, as she has insisted on being called since her resurrection, pops her head in to tell him everything’s ready, and from that point on it’s like time keeps stopping and starting for Dean.

Before he knows it, he’s outside and crossing the field to the tent. Everyone they know is there, friends and family and friends of friends, some faces intimately familiar and others he hasn’t seen in a while, but all smiling and whispering, seemingly excited just to be here for them. Rowena is officiating, and she looks comically tiny next to Sam but otherwise as queenly as ever.

And between them is _Cas,_ already looking right at Dean and smiling like he thinks the sun rises and sets in him. There’s music playing. People are turning to look at him. Charlie gives him a nudge. Right. Time to walk down the aisle. 

Suddenly it’s so _much_. Time judders to a halt, and his vision is swimming, and oh _fuck_. He grabs Charlie’s arm for support. He is Dean Winchester. He literally fought God and won, he is not going to _faint_ walking down the aisle at his wedding. He refuses.

But he can’t take a step either. He can’t seem to move at all.

Then there’s a hand on his other arm, and he turns to see his mom standing there, smiling up at him. She loops an arm through his and clasps his hand, and he relaxes, thaws out. Time starts up again. He can do this if his mom is with him. She won’t let him fall.

He takes one step. Then another. Then he’s walking down the aisle, his mom at his side, Charlie behind them, all his friends and family watching, and Cas is right there, closer with every step he takes. In just a few moments they’re standing right in front of Cas, and his mom lets him go with a kiss on the cheek.

He steps forward. Takes Cas’s hands in his, eyes locked on his face, drinking every detail in. He still can’t quite believe they’re here. That they get to have this. He can’t seem to stop grinning.

Rowena does the dearly-beloved speech and Dean barely hears it, too caught up in Cas’s eyes. Then it’s time for Dean to say his vows, and the words he planned to say--finished, finally, at 3am the night before--fly out of his head, completely forgotten. They were nice words, painstakingly agonized over for days, as perfect as he could make them.

It doesn’t matter. He knows what he wants to say.

He takes a deep breath. Holds Cas’s hands a little tighter.

“Cas.” His voice comes out hoarse and too quiet. He clears his throat. Tries again. “Castiel. The night we met, you said to me 'good things do happen.' Gotta be honest, man...at the time I thought you were full of it. See, nothing in my life up to that point had given me any reason to have faith. I didn't believe in things like true love, or any kinda grand plan, or even myself much. So at first, I didn’t believe in you, either.

“But even before that moment...you saved me. And then you just...kept showin’ up. And you kept savin' me. Over and over again. Every time you showed up, you saved me, just by bein' there. Just by bein' you. And I started to believe in something, really believe, for the first time in my life.

“And it took me so long to realize what that meant. It took me even longer to admit that I wanted you there all the time. That it felt like I was dyin' when you were gone, or I didn't know where you were.

“Y’know...I still don't know if I have much faith in grand plans. But you and me? Man, the way I’ve felt about you sometimes, I’ve wondered if it was some kinda cosmic thing. It felt so...so big, so important that it _had_ to be part of some grand plan.

“Turns out, though, it’s just...us. Just a choice we made once, and kept making. We’re the opposite of destiny, and I’m so glad. We _chose_ each other, in spite of what we were supposed to do.” He stops, swallows hard against the lump in his throat.

“And I'll never understand how I got lucky enough for you to choose me. But I'm so damn glad every day that you did.

“A while back, you told me I changed you. But you changed me, too. Because of you, I learned to have faith...in other people. In myself. In...in us. In you most of all. When I had faith in nothing else, I had faith in you. That you'd be there. That you'd keep coming back to me. And you did, every time.

“And I know it took me half of forever to see what was right in front of my face. Pretty sure everyone here's been ready to cold-clock me out of frustration at least once.”

“Hear, hear!” Sam mutters. The folks in the crowd laugh. Dean laughs a little himself.

“But I got there. We got _here_. And I'm so glad...so fuckin' grateful...that you waited for me to catch up. And now the one thing I want is to be the person you come home to. The person you can lean on. Someone _you_ can believe in, and know that whatever else happens, even if we have _nothing_ else, I’ll have you and you’ll have me. Cas...I can't wait to spend forever with you.”

Cas is smiling at him, crying freely, holding both his hands so hard it almost hurts. He opens his mouth to reply and only a laugh comes out, watery and uneven.

“Dammit, Dean,” he manages, voice husky and higher than normal. “How can I _possibly_ say anything to follow that?”

Dean laughs again, equally watery. He isn’t sure when he started crying, but he is. It feels good. Cathartic, even. To cry for joy for the first time in his life, openly and unashamed.

“Don’t follow it,” he says, reckless with happiness. “Just say you’ll stay with me forever.”

“Of course,” Cas replies, and then Dean can’t wait any longer. He pulls Cas forward by both hands, and then he’s kissing him.

There are whoops and catcalls from the crowd of hunters, all attempts at composure dropped the second the two grooms threw away the wedding script. Dean distantly hears Rowena saying “you may kiss the groom” rather sardonically, and Sam exclaiming “hey, you forgot the rings!” but nothing gets through the haze of joy that is Cas’s lips on his, Cas’s hands in his hair, then Cas’s forehead against his when they finally break apart.

“Sam’s right,” Cas murmurs softly. “We did forget the rings.”

As if on cue, Sam steps forward and hands Cas something. Charlie taps Dean’s shoulder and hands him something as well. No sooner does the cool, smooth band of metal fall into his hand than he’s fumbling to get it onto Cas’s ring finger. It slides on easily, a perfect fit, and then he watches as Cas does the same for him.

“With this ring I thee wed,” Cas says quietly before lacing their hands together.

“Yeah,” Dean whispers, bringing their joined hands up to press a kiss to Cas’s knuckles. “Me too.”

“I think that about covers it,” Rowena says, amusement clear in her voice. “Rings, vows, kiss. I now pronounce you married.”

 _Married._ Dean’s mind tries to wrap itself around the word. He just got _married_. To Cas. All he’s wanted for years is to ask Cas to stay, to know for sure he’d come back when he left. And they just promised each other exactly that. That they’ll both stay. That they’ll both return home to each other always.

He can’t help himself. He pulls Cas in for another kiss, prompting more whoops and laughter from their friends and family.

Dean has never been so happy.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe they're MARRIED.


End file.
